We slowly felt our way along the dark passage way as our eyes adjusted to the dark, and before we stupidly realised we had torches on our phones.

The glow of the double helix grew brighter and before we knew it we were standing below it and had come to another door. It was a solid steel door and It had an electronic lock with a fob sensor like the one at warehouse two. I slapped around my pockets and found the card luckily still stashed in the inside pocket of my jacket.

The door chimed with clunks of the locking mechanism releasing. Thank you trusty magic card I muttered to myself.

We entered network of tunnels that seemed to zigzag underneath the whole city, following them for what felt like hours. They appeared to be utility type tunnels with several pipes running along the walls and ceilings - some well maintained with lights along them, and some derelict and as dark as black.

Each time we followed a double helix it led us to the same type of solid steel door with a sensor like the one where we first entered, though my card didn’t seem to work for any of them. We kept following the symbols and kept getting denied access, until finally one clicked open.

It led to a set of steel stairs, which then led to a regular unlocked door where we emerged into a familiar large open space. Warehouse number two. This time though, the warehouse was filled with people and vehicles.

There were desks manned with each one holding multiple screens, and they were set up like a large open plan office. People were buzzing between each one, and then over to vehicles, packing them with gear.

There were vans, trucks, and sedans all lined up in temporary bays getting packed but also being worked on, evident by the whirling of power tools and sparks of metal being fabricated.

Around the perimeter, and near each entry way, were armed to the teeth guards. It felt like something was imminent the way the tension felt around the warehouse.

It was a jarring difference from the last time I had been in there, where it was nothing but an empty space and used as a trap after I had my first run in with Tai.

He was over in the middle of it all, coordinating everyone and everything before he spotted us standing at the edge of the warehouse in utter confusion.

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“Ahh yes you made it,” he said as he walked over to us.

“Brent said you’d be coming here by the tunnels,” he added.

“Guessing that was the enforcer sergeant who helped us?”

Tai gave a nod before turning and raising his arms up. “And that’s also why this is all here.”

“As you already know, my father and the consortium have the chief of police in there pock—“

“Yeah yeah who isn’t,” I interrupted.

Tai cleared his throat.

“Yes. Well, we have a number of enforcers within the Sequencers now, all of whom tipped us off that the police located our HQ and we’re about to strike. It’s forced us to to bring our timeline forward and keep on our toes.

Both Jake and I just stared at him, not entirely sure what ‘bringing our timeline forward’ really meant in the grand scheme of things, and Jake hadn’t even wanted to be a part of any of this. He was just kind of forced into it and I knew he was dying to grill Tai on everything about Sequencers.

“So what’s the end goal here” asked Jake in a rather condescending tone.

“To keep it simple. We need to reverse all the modifications and bring us back to how we were originally. Before all the editing, corruption, and control.”

Jake didn’t seem too impressed with the response, his face contorting in judgment.

“Yeah okay, and how does that work exactly,” he asked.

Tai went through the in and outs exactly how he told me when I asked the same question.

We had to disrupt the stranglehold that the Consortium had on the world by revealing the truth of the illegal edits they were sneaking into each new generation. We were to do this while finding the original sequences before we could start to reverse the cycle.

Reversing generations of edits was no small feat either. It required a slow restoration over future generations, slowly weeding out the changes and restoring order. It wasn’t just flicking a switch, abrupt major changes would lead to shock and mistakes, most likely killing millions of people. So it had to be slow and steady.

After a solid twenty minutes or so of back and forth with Tai, Jake seemed to be more open to the idea of it all as he started to piece together what he was saying along with some of the events that had already happened. Even though he didn’t really have a choice anymore, it was easier for him, and us all, that he’d accept his invitation into the Sequencers.

“Reed, I need you and Jake to go pay a visit to Felix Tewk,” said Tai.

“Ah, who now?” I replied.

“Felix Tewk. He’s the CEO of Lifespan and the easiest out of the lot to get to.”

“Right,” I said with a hint of hesitation.

After asking him exactly what he wanted us to do, he told me that we needed to extract any information that we could from him on the whereabouts of the original genome sequences.

Still unsure of why we were tasked with it, two rookies new to the movement, we went along with it and were given a vehicle by Tai to use in addition to a support van.

The support van was retrofitted with tech in the back, a sort of surveillance and field HQ that came with four armed security guards. It was moving so rapidly and was bigger than I assumed that it made me start to feel uneasy, it felt like a war. It was a war, and we were sucked into it.

We put in one of several addresses for Felix to check out first. His main residence, we had figured he would have most likely enjoyed spending evenings in his sprawling estate so it was first on the list, even though it was a six hour drive away from the city where it would - a short commute for the mega wealthy however, in their private aircraft no doubt.

“How are we going to even do this?” Asked Jake as we pulled out of the warehouse.

I let out an exhausted sigh, I wanted to push the how out of my mind, or just entirely forget about it all and not do it.

“No idea, I want to try and get in and out of that place as quick as possible. We’ll get there while it’s still dark so we’ll have to scope it out and figure it out there.”

Tai said it was the easiest of the lot, but that offered no reassurance that he still wouldn’t be heavily guarded no matter where he was.